During the National Bike Summit, Bike Belong announced a new initiative to engage more bicyclists at the grassroots level. Their goals is to “…gather a million names of support, to speak with one, powerful voice to make bicycling safer, more convenient and appealing for everyone.”

Every day, millions of Americans ride for their health, for the environment, for their communities, and for the pure joy of bicycling. But until now, only a fraction of riders have stood up to help improve bicycling in America.

Peopleforbikes.org is going to change all that. We’ll build on the expert work of existing bike advocacy groups — our partners — to develop a powerful movement with the clout and influence to get things done. That means promoting bike-riding on an individual level, but also sending a unified message to our elected leaders, the media, and the public that bicycling should have their full support.

You can help them reach their goal by making the pledge on the People for Bikes web site.

Congratulations to The Hub of Detroit. The League of American Bicyclists has named them as the first gold-level Bicycle Friendly Business in Michigan.

Businesses that apply for the award are contributing to a more bicycle-friendly lifestyle for their employees. The Hub of Detroit serves as an example for best practices and innovations in bicycle friendliness at the workplace. The Hub of Detroit makes bicycling an easy option for transportation and provides amenities such as mechanical assistance and education, ample bicycle parking and incentives such as an ally program where ongoing time commitments to the organization yield expanded access to tool space and time.

“This Bicycle Friendly Business is making a difference for employees, customers, and communities,” said Bill Nesper, Director of the Bicycle Friendly America Program. “The Hub of Detroit promotes bicycling as a viable form of transportation and gives their employees choices and options that make biking to work easy and fun.”

The other Michigan-based Bicycle Friendly Businesses are the League of Michigan Bicyclists in Lansing (silver) and Mel Trotter Ministries in Grand Rapids (bronze).

Yesterday the Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance (MTGA) was awarded a $15,000 grant from REI and Bikes Belong. The grant is to help MTGA and the city of Detroit earn Bicycle Friendly Community recognition from the League of  American Bicyclists. As part of the award, the League is also providing technical support.

MTGA was one of only five groups to receive this award, which was announced at the National Bike Summit yesterday in Washington DC.

As we’ve noted earlier, the Bicycle Friendly Community evaluation isn’t well suited for shrinking cities like Detroit, which also rely heavily on public-private partnerships. This should be an excellent opportunity to work with the League on making the application better fit Detroit.

It was a bit of surprise seeing a Google booth at the National Bike Summit.   They are here to announce biking directions on Google Maps. This is a nice complement to the driving, walking, and public transit directions.

The routing algorithm doesn’t shy away from routing cyclists on some main roads, like Woodward Avenue. Perhaps we can use this as another reason to make Metro Detroit’s streets more bike friendly.

One major issue: Google is showing sidepaths/wide sidewalks as legitimate bicycling facilities when they are not according to national design guidelines. This makes us think SEMCOG may have provided this data to Google. Despite our comments against doing so, SEMCOG included sidepaths/wide sidewalks as bicycle facilities maps. We’ll bring this issue up with Google.

Here’s part of the announcement from the League of American Bicyclists:

This new feature includes: step-by-step bicycling directions; bike trails outlined directly on the map; and a new “Bicycling” layer that indicates bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly roads. The directions feature provides step-by-step, bike-specific routing suggestions – similar to the directions provided by our driving, walking, or public transit modes. Simply enter a start point and destination and select “Bicycling” from the drop-down menu. You will receive a route that is optimized for cycling, taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible.

Visit http://maps.google.com/biking to try out this new feature. Biking directions for Google Maps is currently in Beta.

The National Bike Summit in Washington DC begins this evening. I will be attending as MTGA’s Detroit Greenways Coordinator, along with Kelli Kavanaugh from the Wheelhouse Detroit, Mike Reuter from American Cycle and Fitness, John Waterman from PEAC, and others.

I hope to do some live blogging from the event, but that’s going to be a challenge given the very busy schedule.

I will provide one teaser. Yesterday I received the following invitation from Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists, the group organizing this summit.

I would be honored if you would join special National Bike Summit guests for Lunch on Wednesday, March 10. Please take your seat at the ENVIRONMENT table near the podium.

All I can say at this point is its some more good news for biking in Detroit.

– Todd Scott